In developed countries, the quality of life is of first priority and an overall assessment of power plant impact on the living standard requires a multicriteria analysis of both positive and negative factors incorporating uncertainty in criteria performance and probability assessment of weighting factors. This study incorporates PROMETHEE II to assess 10 major types of power plant under 12 criteria, 13 fixed and infinite customized probability assessed weight set scenarios. The power plants considered are coal/lignite, oil, natural gas turbine, natural gas combined cycle, nuclear, hydro, wind, photovoltaic, biomass and geothermal. Geothermal, wind and photovoltaic power plants are excellent choices in most of the cases and biomass and hydro should also be preferred to nuclear and fossil fuel. Among nuclear and fossil fuel the choice is based on the specific parameters of each case examined while natural gas technologies have specific advantages. The motivation of this study was to provide a tool for the decision-maker to evaluate all major types of power plant incorporating multicriteria and customized probability assessment of weighting factors. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.